"Inside Earth"

Now we are reading "Inside Earth." I really had expected a story set physically under the surface of the Earth which this is not and the significance of the title is not yet clear, at least not to me. Extrasolar humanoids run an interstellar empire that has conquered Earth and that tries to goad Earthlings into uniting against it because a united Earth will make a stronger contribution to interstellar civilization - or something. I am not minded to reread to try to make any more sense of this.

We have found another description of the Milky Way with something against it:

"Her bow guns were dark shadows against the clotted cold silver of the Milky Way." (in IV.)

There are some good Andersonian descriptions:

"The Rockies are huge and serene, a fresh cold wind blows from their peaks and roars in the pines, brawling rivers foam through their dales and canyons - it is a big landscape, clean and strong and lonely. It speaks with silence." (in II.)

Maine fishermen and artisans are:

"...at home with the darkling woods and the restless sea and the high windy sky." (in III.)

The alien first person narrator is physically so similar to a Terrestrial human being that he can be surgically disguised as one and his mentality is almost indistinguishable. This is one of Poul Anderson's fictional universe where "human beings" somehow already inhabit many planets.